The tale of failed Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX is coming to a close as the company’s bankruptcy trustee found today that its allegedly late founder stole the missing $190 million.

At its peak, QuadrigaCX was Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange before it shut down under suspicious circumstances in late January. Cryptocurrency exchanges either going out of business because of hacking or outright theft is not that uncommon, but QuadrigaCX was particularly weird in a cesspool of cryptocurrency exchange scams.

At the time it went out of business, it was claimed, in what SiliconANGLE described at the time as one of “the most fanciful stories ever told in relation to a crypto exchange,” that its founder, Gerald Cotten (pictured) had died of Crohns Disease while in India. He allegedly was the only person who had access to the exchange’s cold storage wallets.

The short version is that the exchange claimed that it was going out of business because it didn’t have the passwords to access customer funds.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, the sole good guy in the sordid tale, offered a $100,000 reward for information about the location of $190 million Feb. 28. In March, it was found that the very same wallets that the company claimed it couldn’t access were empty anyway.

Fast-forward to June and Ernst & Young, QuadrigaCX’s bankruptcy trustee, has found that Cotten not only transferred customer cryptocurrency funds to personal accounts to use in margin trading on other cryptocurrency exchanges but also used those funds to pay for luxury goods and real estate.

Those purchases included properties in Nova Scotia and British Columbia, a small aircraft, “luxury vehicles,” a sailboat, investments, cash and gold and silver coins, according to Yahoo News.

“Substantial funds were transferred to Mr. Cotten personally and other related parties,” the E&Y report noted. The firm has “not located any support justifying these transfers,” it added.

Whether Cotten is actually dead or faked his death also remains questionable. While veering into conspiracy theory territory, Cotten’s death, if true, was also a massive coincidence since it occurred a little over a month before QuadrigaCX went out of business thanks to his alleged maleficence.

About $31 million has been recovered by E&Y during the bankruptcy proceedings to be returned eventually to customers. But that figure is based on valuations of cryptocurrency at the time QuadrigaCX went out of business.

With bitcoin seemingly doing a repeat of 2017, based on June cryptocurrency prices the amount could be multiplied by at least five times. That makes the potential theft possibly worth more than $1 billion based on current prices.

Photo: QuadrigaCX